


A Good Mother

by lynndyre



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Lactation Kink, Mutual Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 16:24:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1654925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynndyre/pseuds/lynndyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following the stillbirth in 1631, Louis and Anne find a new way to connect with each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Good Mother

“I wanted to see you.”

Anne doesn’t look like herself, with her hair down, swallowed by the huge expanse of the bed. But she isn’t screaming. And there isn’t any blood. Not like... 

Last night he blamed her entirely. But this morning Louis talked to Treville, whose wife has born children both live and dead. And Anne is still alive. They can keep trying. 

“I am as you find me, my lord.” 

Louis doesn’t know what that means. It doesn’t matter. He has other things to talk about. Even after yelling to the Cardinal, yelling to God, yelling to Treville, it doesn’t make sense. “He was so small. He was... He was supposed to _live_.”

Anne grows smaller, drawing into herself with a tiny sob. Louis frowns, face twisting as his own tears overflow again.

“No, don’t cry. You did everything you were supposed to this time! No chases, no stairs. Sun, and shade, and food, and all of it.” 

Anne moves, and there are wet patches growing on the front of her shift, darkening the fabric. Louis pulls aside her wrap to look, drying his tears with the back of his hand. He sniffles.

“Let me see you?” It is as much a request as he knows how to make it, but for all that still an order. He traces a hand over the upper curve of her swollen breasts, presses gently until a droplet emerges, and trickles palely white over the red of the aureole.

“Even your body wanted him to live.”

“It aches. All of me aches with it, needing to nurture him.” Her face is composed, always more composed than Louis can manage, but her tears are little streams, constant down her cheeks. ‘Every part of me.”

Louis kicks off his heeled shoes, climbs further onto the bed, nearly into Anne’s lap. There is a pimple where her corset has rubbed her skin, and Louis decides he likes it. It, like her grief, makes her seem less distant from him.

He runs his thumb through the little trail of milk, and sucks it clean. Then pauses, tense, and waits for Anne’s disapproval, frozen with his thumb still between his teeth.

Her expression is strange, but not angry. For a moment, they watch each other. 

“Will you drink? It is a milk for none but the line of the Kings of France.”

Louis has no memory of his own mother like this, only of her betrayal, their tentative reconciliation. He hopes she held him thus, hopes she murmured to him as Anne does, and kissed his hair. For a moment he is glad his child, his son, is not here to take this moment away from him. It is an unworthy thought. But sometimes Louis thinks he is an unworthy man.

He pushes closer to Anne’s bosom, and she cradles his head against her, one hand in his hair. One of her tears falls on his face, and trails down to his mouth where it meets her breast, he can taste its clear salt mixing with the sweet thinness of her milk.

Her hand brushes his cheek, and he looks up to meet her eyes, and there’s a hint of something there other than sorrow, other than the blank face she shows him at court. Maybe it is hope? Maybe only fondness, but still more than he can normally evoke in his queen. His wife.

He wraps his arms around her tiny waist, and curls closer in her lap, and she guides him to her left breast, and strokes his hair as he suckles. She’s a _good_ mother. Not like his own. He can feel her caring, like this. The way she holds him, and pets him, and calls him ‘sweet Louis’ even through her tears.

She would take good care of their son. He had doubted it. Had doubted her. But he knows it now. She will be a good mother.

They’ll just have to try harder, next time.


End file.
